


Turn About is Fair Play

by Lilith Sedai (TAFKAB)



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Depression, M/M, Solitude, references to Clone Wars canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 08:51:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11309964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TAFKAB/pseuds/Lilith%20Sedai
Summary: Ben Kenobi has gained a painful insight that makes him reluctant to commune with Qui-Gon Jinn.  (An old story)





	Turn About is Fair Play

It's inconceivable that only thirteen years have passed since Qui-Gon Jinn died. 

Ben Kenobi shakes sand off his cloak and squints against the twin suns as they begin to sink toward the horizon. Many cultures believe thirteen is an unlucky number; at this point, he is inclined to agree. 

Thirteen years. They weigh on his shoulders as if they had been thirty. 

He puts one foot in front of the other, making his way through the sliding sand with difficulty, patrolling the perimeter of his small, shabby holding. He has only just arrived at his destination; he must still sweep the sand out of his squat domed shack and begin to make it into a home. He must still re-wire the electrics and purchase a cookstove and repair his secondhand vaporator and install some kind of a 'fresher-- not necessarily in that order. 

The sand stings his face and he pulls up his hood, alert for Tuskens, his senses extended all the way to the horizon. The Force is quiet; there is, as yet, no threat. 

He has taken the lessons Yoda promised; the theory of how to commune with Qui-Gon Jinn through the Living Force is now clear to him, but he has not yet put it into practice. He thinks that he will not, at least for a time. Not until he has exhausted the meager distractions that working to make his homestead habitable will offer, not until he has met and been rejected by his few neighbors, not until the lonely howling of the desert winds becomes more difficult to endure than the whispering of the ghosts that haunt his mind-- all of them, so many, beginning with Cerasi and Bruck Chun, and ending with Anakin Skywalker. 

He has had enough of ghosts. He has had enough of many things-- of disappointment and of death, of pretending to strength in the face of defeat, of being entrusted with hope over and over and over again, only to fail. He is the padawan who was never wanted, the suitor who was never quite suitable --and all those he ever loved are dead now, or worse--, the master who was never respected, the general who didn't win the war. His apprentice turned, he left his last mission unfinished (to disastrous effect), and his fate is to be all but the last of the living Jedi. He is nearly a ghost himself. 

Owen Lars is right: it is undoubtedly for the best if he has as little to do with Luke as possible. 

Ben returns to his shelter when the rim of the first sun touches the horizon; he goes inside and seals the door as well as he can. it is crooked. Sand drifts in, forming lazy sweeps across the duracrete flooring. 

He allows himself to consider what would be said if he seated himself, folded his legs, and prepared his soul for communion with the much-revered and long-deceased Qui-Gon Jinn. 

He doesn't have to wonder very hard, of course. He learned that answer on Mortis. As if it had not already been said; as if Qui-Gon had questioned whether his padawan would honor his dying wishes. If that were true, his master had never truly known him. And yet, there it was: the only thing Qui-Gon had to say to his one-time apprentice, even after so many years: "Did you train the boy? He is the Chosen One." 

Ben smiles, a smile that reflects no pleasure or humor, only the razor edge of a pain so savage it has left his soul in tatters. He has, in fact, trained Anakin as requested, and he has learned first-hand what Anakin was chosen for. Not that it had been unforeseeable; it was, in fact, foreseen from the very start. Obi-Wan had seen it himself, in fact, and would have been wary, had he not chosen to defer to his master instead of trusting his instincts. 

Listening to Qui-Gon Jinn got him-- all of them-- into this mess. Perhaps it's time he was ignored. 

The temperature plummets when the suns sink, and the night wind batters the hovel, its shrieking voice slicing into his nightmares. It sounds like a man dying, screaming, writhing in flames. 

After an hour or two, Ben gets up, puts on his heavy cloak, and sits in the sand on the floor. He begins to assemble the condensor unit for his vaporator. Qui-Gon's old poncho lies over the tattered chair in the corner; he has kept it through all the long years. Now, he turns his back on it. 

He thinks, as his hands work, about something Yoda said to him during the training: mentioning how he first heard Qui-Gon, who was warning Anakin through the Force while he slaughtered the Tuskens who kidnapped his mother. Anakin had still been a padawan then. 

Ben Kenobi may not have been the best Jedi who ever lived-- neither the wisest, nor the strongest, nor the best fighter, nor the best pilot; he wasn't the best padawan, knight, master, or general. But he isn't a stupid man, either. 

That scrap of information started him pondering, and he's had plenty of time to reflect on it while he fled from the Emperor --fled Vader-- with Luke. As they rode on half a dozen transports toward the Outer Rim, he kept to his cabin and tended the infant. In the absence of anything more demanding to occupy his mind, he remembered a thousand odd little moments that he had once dismissed, long ago. 

It was painfully clear, if you had the wit to see it: all the endless instances when Anakin chuckled for no reason, or murmured a comment apropos of nothing, or his face went distant and abstract, and Obi-Wan had to summon him back with a word or two-- or sometimes more. Dozens of times Anakin hid away and came out later, thoughtful, only to spout a bit of wisdom about the Living Force that made Obi-Wan nearly burst with pride that his padawan had come up with such understanding on his own. And too, there were the numerous incredible insights that Anakin had conceived into Obi-Wan's past, and into the way he thought; all that, plus scraps of information Obi-Wan assumed his padawan had picked up around the Temple-- even though he had next to no friends to gossip with. 

It didn't seem to occur to Yoda, but it's blisteringly apparent to Ben, in hindsight. Qui-Gon spent the whole thirteen years interacting regularly with Anakin. Anakin never chose to share that secret, and Qui-Gon hasn't had much to say to his erstwhile padawan either. Except on Mortis, when he chose to pretend he didn't know what had been happening all along, and wasted their single reunion on repeating his dying words, as if they hadn't been heeded the first time. 

Ben smiles again, bitter-sharp-- or perhaps it's a snarl. For all his discorporate meddling, Qui-Gon couldn't prevent his precious Chosen One from turning, either. Perhaps he'd simply been unable to overcome Obi-Wan's ineptitude. Or maybe Dooku had been right after all, and Qui-Gon Jinn deliberately and remorselessly used Obi-Wan Kenobi as a pawn in a plot to set the Jedi Order up to fall. 

He doesn't particularly care to learn which is true. 

Ben puts the half-finished condenser on the floor and watches the suns rise from his doorstep, letting the brightness sear his sight. He blames that for the moisture on his cheeks, anyway, and doesn't bother wiping it away. It evaporates into the dry air before it ever reaches his chin. 

This is anger. This is bitterness. This is despair. This is a thousand things a Jedi isn't supposed to feel. Good thing there are no others around to judge him-- or rather, that he has no intention of talking to the only one who is. 

It's quite fitting, really. 

He goes in to resume his work on the vaporator. Maybe in the heat of the day, now that the wind has gone, he will be able to sleep.


End file.
